


Hoist By Their Own Petard

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: F/M, Nonconsensual riffing, Origin Theory, Post-Canon, Post-episode: s12e06 Ator the Fighting Eagle, Season/Series 13 Speculation, Speculation, Waverly is a precious orange nugget, What wasn't Dr. Erhardt telling Kinga?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 21:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17373305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Jonah's revenge is swift, and Kinga and Max are not good at staying on task when clearly they're meant to be riffing. After all, Kinga's got an awful lot on her mind after the crazy day that was the Gauntlet, and it's not like she and Max are experienced riffers anyways. At least they have someone who has a little riffing experience to help them out... not that they pay him much heed.





	Hoist By Their Own Petard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Paycheckgurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paycheckgurl/gifts).



> One of the fun things about organizing the exchange is seeing everyone's requests, and as soon as I saw that this request wasn't going to be written as a fill, I had to adopt it myself. I mean, you all know I can't resist the Mads anyways, and with that cliffhanger...? I was doomed.

**5 minutes in**

"I can't find a way out," Kinga said, stalking back to the theater seats with a sneer curling her lip. Max had settled into a seat right away, staring up at the screen with a look of fascination on his face; he glanced over at her as she sat next to him with a huff.

"Give Jonah a little credit," he said. "He wouldn't go through the trouble of trapping us here and give us an easy out. But he's also not evil, so I doubt we'll be trapped here forever."

"Don't defend him!"

"I mean, I'm just speaking the truth. Don't get mad at me for doing it." Kinga scowled, and Max rolled his eyes. "Or, fine, be mad about it and sit here in a huff, I'm sure that will make you feel so much better than just getting into it and riffing with me."

"Oh, shut up," she said, but she slouched in her seat until her shoulder pressed into his. "We shouldn't have to riff things that have already been riffed. It's derivative."

"I don't know what to tell you, Kinga. All the films you've converted to Kingachrome have been riffed before." He put an arm around her shoulders, and she whined and leaned into him. "At least the old masters aren't of movies as completely shitty as the ones we just put Jonah through?"

"They're pretty shitty."

"Yeah, but they're not _that_ shitty." He turned to kiss her temple. "Come on, riff with me a little. If you get tired of it, we can always have that conversation about feelings you keep putting off...."

"Let's riff the fuck out of this," Kinga said hastily. Max sighed and turned his attention back to the screen.

* * *

 

**30 minutes in**

The theater seats weren't very comfortable. Kinga supposed that was only fair—she'd made sure the ones on the SOL weren't, either—but there wasn't a whole lot to be done to make them more comfortable, either. She leaned into Max a little harder and put her head on his shoulder with a sigh.

"Are you okay?" he asked, and she snorted.

"Oh, yeah, I'm peachy keen. I'm trapped against my will in a theater I didn't know existed until I got stuck in it, watching the crap my father selected to drive someone insane, and who knows how long we'll be in here before the Boneheads notice we're gone—or whether they'll even care enough to try to find us—meanwhile I'm starving because we were supposed to have dinner after we finished the last episode, and also it's cold in here, and I—"

"Breathe," Max said, and Kinga inhaled slowly. "Yes. That's all valid. Can I make a counterpoint, or do you just want to be mad about it?"

"Go ahead."

"Whatever happened to us was caught on Kingachrome. It's not like we vanished without a trace. If any of the Boneheads review the episode, they'll see what happened and they'll come get us."

"Assuming they don't leave us to rot."

"They're not going to leave us to rot. They'll come find us. I promise."

"I'm still hungry and cold."

"Sit up," he said, and shrugged off his white coat when she lifted her head, draping it over her and tucking it around her shoulders tenderly. "There. Better?" She buried her nose in the collar of the coat and took another deep breath, exhaling it on a sigh.

"Yes. Thanks." The improvised blanket was still warm from his body, and his scent clinging to the fabric was oddly reassuring. Max offered her a smile, and after a moment she returned it. Then her stomach growled. "I'm still hungry, though."

"Yeah, me too. Too bad we don't have Gypsy dropping off snacks for us, right?" Kinga just harumphed and huddled under his coat.

* * *

 

**45 minutes in**

"Hello?" Kinga's head popped off Max's shoulder at the sound of a voice. Who was that? "Hello, is someone in here?" The voice was getting closer.

"We're over here," Max called, and he looked at Kinga with recognition in his eyes. "It's a bot," he said, a moment before M. Waverly walked around the edge of the theater seats and paused.

"What have we here…? Oh, it's you," the bot said in dismay. "I missed the tour after all."

"Come over here," Kinga demanded. She hadn't spent much time with Jonah's first mechanical offspring, and she studied the little orange bot in the flickering light of the theater screen as he came closer.

Max quietly squealed. “Oh no, this one is even cuter up close!”

Waverly's head tilted, and he diplomatically said, “You're cuter up close too. So… Where are we?”

“Jonah trapped us in this hidden theater,” Kinga said, eyes narrowing. “How’d you get in here?”

“I was trying to find the tour vehicle… I don’t have a very good sense of direction,” Waverly said, and he clambered up into the seat next to Max. “I guess I’ll be doing some riffing after all, though!”

“Kinga… we’re riffing with a _bot_ ,” Max said. “This is for real.”

“Don’t get excited about our captivity,” Kinga snapped. “This doesn’t make anything better.”

“I haven’t riffed a whole movie before,” Waverly said in excitement.

“Well, these are shorts, so you still won’t have,” she said, folding her arms and sitting back in her seat with her lip curled. “Hope whatever you went back for was worth being stuck here with us.”

“I packed the snacks. Everyone’s going to miss me,” Waverly said.

“You’ve got snacks?” Kinga leaned around Max to pin Waverly with an intent stare.

“Oh, yeah, do I ever! I was planning on making this tour the debut of my gourmet trail mix business!”

“What’s gourmet about it?” Max asked, and Waverly slung his bag off his back and started digging through it, rapidly producing far more stuff than should have fit in it.

“Well, all the dried fruit was grown in the hydroponics bay of the Satellite of Love, the nuts were sourced from fair trade farms around the globe, the chocolate is Swiss, and, ha-ha, all the savory baked bits were produced right in the kitchen of the SOL by yours truly!”

“I had no idea you’d set up a cottage industry,” Kinga said, clearly already thinking about how to steal not only Waverly’s bag full of snacks but his business concept as well.

“That sounds _amazing_ ,” Max said, and Waverly pushed a bag of trail mix into his hands.

“Here, you said you wanted Tahitian Treat before, didn’t you? This is my tropical mix, maybe you’ll like it.”

“Thanks!”

“And what about you, Ms. Evil Overlord? Sweet tooth or more a fan of savory things?”

“Give me whatever has the most chocolate in it.” Kinga snatched the bag out of Waverly’s hand as soon as he held it up and tore the plastic open with her teeth, and Waverly leaned back in his seat with alarm.

“I’d, uh, I’d appreciate your honest feedback,” he said a little weakly, starting to stuff the rest of the bags back into his incongruous backpack.

“Are you growing _pineapples_ on the SOL?” Max asked, eyes wide.

“Oh yes! They’re one of Jonah’s pet projects. We’ve also got mangos and bananas.”

“How the hell do you have those trees on that Satellite?” Kinga asked with her mouth full. “I didn’t put those on there.”

“It’s just a hydroponics bay… you should really just relax,” Waverly said. Kinga snorted but was more focused on getting her stomach to stop growling than on the unexpected provenance of trees.

“This is _ridiculously_ good,” Max said, “I don’t know _how_ you grew the fruits but my compliments to the gardener.”

“I’ll pass them along to Jonah next time I see him,” Waverly said. “So you really like it?”

“Oh, definitely!”

“And what about you?” Waverly asked Kinga, who licked chocolate off her fingertips and shrugged in feigned nonchalance.

“It’s all right. You’re not terrible at coming up with flavor profiles, for a bot.”

“Oh, gee, thanks,” Waverly said. He turned back to look at the screen, which was showing Coily the spring sprite vanishing all the springs. “This is a classic, isn’t it? Are we really riffing it?”

“I think we have to,” Max said. “I think that’s the reason we’re here. Well, the reason she and I are here. You’re here by accident.”

“Is he?” Kinga asked in her deliberately evil voice. “Or did he get left behind on purpose? I think Jonah left him here. He’s the one who planned this whole ironic comeuppance. We needed a bot to balance the numbers and here one is. How convenient.”

“Jonah wouldn’t do that,” Waverly said firmly. “He wanted me to come with him. Me being here is my own fault, it has nothing to do with him.”

“Is it really, though?” Unsettled, Waverly focused on the theater screen, silent for a long moment. Max elbowed Kinga sharply.

“Don’t be mean to him. He’s an innocent little nugget.”

“Oh, _please._ ”

* * *

 

**4 hours in**

“What’s wrong?” Max asked. Kinga had given him his coat back, put her head back on his shoulder, and left him and Waverly to mock the shorts. As the credits for another one rolled he realized she hadn’t offered a riff in nearly half an hour.

“I’m thinking,” Kinga said. “Or trying to think. Doing my best to think under the circumstances.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“What Dr. Erhardt said. About my mom. I’ve wondered about her my whole life, and when he gave me a name, I was so excited, but…”

“But what?”

“It doesn’t feel right.” She lifted her head and looked at Max, frowning deeply.

“He said it pretty quickly, I don’t think he made it up,” Max said. “I mean, he _did_ know your dad after you were born.”

“Maybe that’s what my dad told him, but it doesn’t ring true, does it?”

“It sounds plausible to me…”

“I think you’re right,” Waverly said from Max’s other side. Kinga’s eyes narrowed as she looked around Max at the diminutive bot. “I’ve seen the old episodes. There’s no way _your_ dad landed Kim Cattrall without a mind control machine.”

“Hey,” Kinga said, offended on her father’s behalf even though Waverly wasn’t exactly wrong about the twitchy, oblivious, ambiguously gay jerk Clayton Forrester had been.

“Well, you do look a bit like her,” Max said. “And what would he have to gain by lying about it?”

“I don’t know… but I don’t trust him. He’s a little too… _woo-woo_ now.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely the vibe he gives off. I’m pretty sure his journey of self discovery that worked out real nice involved a lot of interesting substances along the way.”

“If he’s telling the truth, there’s _something_ he’s holding back,” Kinga sighed, sitting back and staring up at the screen for half a second before sitting up in indignation at the title screen of _Are You Ready For Marriage?_ “Oh, come on, _this_ one?”

“Hey, Kinga… wouldn’t it be funny to see how we’re doing against 1950s standards?” Max asked. The big dope looked genuinely excited about it when she turned to sneer at him, but her sour expression didn’t dampen his enthusiasm. “I’ve always wanted to get married someday. I’m pretty sure we’re not going to live up to archaic gender roles, but—”

“Max, if the next words that come out of your mouth aren’t a riff that has nothing to do with the two of us, I’m going to make you pay for it.” Max closed his mouth but didn’t stop smiling at her.

“I think the two of you need a lot more help than a short can offer,” Waverly said. Kinga stood up, stormed past Max, picked Waverly up out of his seat, and dropped him on the floor with a loud rattle of mechanical limbs. “Ow! That smarts!”

“Riff the movie. Not my life.” Kinga flopped back down into her seat and folded her arms across her chest in a sullen slump. Max picked Waverly up from the floor, dusted off the top of his beak, and set him back in his seat.

“Sorry about her. She’s prone to violence.”

“As long as she doesn’t beat me into my component parts, I’ve survived worse,” Waverly said dryly. “You know, I’ve always wanted to get married too.”

“Always,” Kinga scoffed. “All several months of your existence.”

“Oh, I can’t riff on you but you can riff on me?”

“Riff the _movie_.”

“Right.”

* * *

 

**4 hours and 18 minutes in**

“ _No_ ,” Kinga said sharply. “Absolutely not.”

“Swing and a miss,” Waverly said as Max’s face fell.

“Oh, come on. We can have a really long engagement, I’m not saying we have to get hitched as soon as we get rescued from here or anything. Just some day.”

“I’m not marrying you.”

“Ever?”

“Maybe.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re already clingy as a boyfriend and you’d be even worse as a husband!”

“I’m not _clingy_ ,” Max said.

“You’re pretty clingy,” Waverly said.

“I’m not _that_ clingy.”

“Yeah, you are,” Kinga said. “Your affection is smothering if I encourage it.”

“How would you know? You don't encourage it. I’m pretty sure no is the word you use most when speaking to me.”

“I think you should give him a chance,” Waverly said. “He’s obviously crazy about you!”

“What were you saying about being beaten into component parts?” Kinga snarled, and Waverly cowered behind Max.

“Nothing!”

“Don’t threaten him,” Max said.

“You prefer I threaten you?”

“Not exactly…” Max had discovered the quickest way to derail a building fight was to kiss Kinga more or less as soon as kissing her was a thing he’d been allowed to do, which meant he hadn’t done it often enough yet to perfect the technique. He reached up to cup her cheek, and although her lip curled in a sneer, she pressed into his touch and not away from it, unresisting as he leaned in to kiss her softly. She sighed into his lips and rested her forehead against his when the kiss ended.

“That's slightly better than threatening you.”

“I don't want to argue with you. If you think I'm too clingy to marry, I'll just have to work on that.” He paused a beat and added, “But I'm not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I'm really not.”

“I thought you didn't want to argue.” Kinga smirked when he sat back and turned his focus back on the screen.

“You guys are _terrible_ riffers,” Waverly said. “You keep going off on your personal tangents. None of this is going to make good TV except to the most rabid shippers.”

“Hey, the twerps up on the Satellite get host segments, we're just stuck in here with no escape. So what if we go off topic during the credits?” Kinga said just for argument's sake.

“We have shippers?” Max asked. “I didn’t really think we’d— I mean, I _hoped_ we’d be, you know, supported as a pairing, but—”

“Max. Shut up,” Kinga said, elbowing him sharply. “Don’t go down that rabbit hole or you’ll never come back up.”

“Do you think they’re happy about the Gauntlet?”

“ _Max_.”

“Okay, okay! Sorry. I just… wow, what a weird thought.”

“Get your head in the game,” Waverly said as the next short started. “Or whatever this becomes is going to tank, and you’ll disappoint all the fans whether they’re shippers or not.”

“All right, already! Sheesh. I’ll drop it.”

* * *

 

**6 hours, 22 minutes in**

“Hey, Kinga?”

“Mm?” She’d slouched in her seat, heedless of wrecking the shadowrama, and Max elbowed her gently to get her to sit up.

“I had a thought about what you said earlier.”

“What?”

“About your mom.”

“Oh… what’s the thought?”

“What if Kim Cattrall is just the source of half your genetic code, but she didn’t carry you?” Kinga frowned and leaned back to look at him, and Max added, “I mean, you know I was cloned… maybe you were created in a lab too.”

“Then why wouldn’t my father have told me so?”

“Well, I never got told either. I had to find it out for myself. And doesn’t it make more sense to think that he could have gotten hold of some of her hair or something than to think he actually impregnated her?”

“I mean…. Yeah.”

“You’re a clone?” Waverly interrupted, and Max turned to look at him.

“Uh, yeah? I thought you said you’d seen the old episodes. I look _just_ like my dad except my hair is curlier than his.”

“I thought it was just a strong family resemblance,” Waverly said. “Wow, so neither of you have moms… neither do I! I have a creator. And apparently you do too.”

“Oh, I don’t like that,” Kinga said. “I really don’t like that. The thought of being put together like a science experiment.”

“Well, you’re by far the most perfect thing that ever came out of Deep 13,” Max said, “and… so what if we were deliberately created? That’s better than being the result of an accident, isn’t it? We were wanted. That’s more than a lot of people can say.”

“I guess,” Kinga said, but she leaned into him, lips pursed thoughtfully. “That’s got a real creepy fanboy crossing the line vibe though.”

“Which contradicts your mental concept of your father in what way, exactly?” She wrinkled her nose, and Max smiled. “Come on, doesn’t it make more sense than thinking that your movie star mom who would have had no problem affording a child would hand off her daughter to a mad scientist instead of raising her?”

“You’re being too logical,” Kinga muttered, “logic has nothing to do with anything my father ever did.”

“His insanity wasn’t transmissible by touch,” Max said. “You can explain away _his_ behavior like that, but you can’t explain away _hers_ unless you think she’s insane too.”

“Maybe she just didn’t want a kid?”

“Yeah, that _totally_ tracks. A woman who makes a living on her looks carrying a child to term and then getting rid of it instead of just having an abortion.” Max rolled his eyes. “Come on, my idea makes as much sense as anything you can come up with, isn’t it at least worth considering?”

“I’m not _considering_ it, I’m trying to find the flaw in it. You know, the way a scientist is supposed to do with a hypothesis? Start with an idea and then try to make it fall apart to prove it’s right if it doesn’t?”

“Max’s Theory of Kinga’s Origin seems pretty sound to me,” Waverly chimed in, “and I’ve got an ultra logical digital brain!”

“Oh, _please_ ,” Kinga said. “You might be a robot, but that doesn’t make you logical. You and Growler aren’t any more logical than Tom and Crow for having been made later and by a different person. You’re all a bunch of weirdos.”

“What about Gypsy?” Waverly asked.

“Gypsy’s the only logical being involved in this entire experiment from start to finish,” Max muttered, and Kinga elbowed him.

“Gypsy’s the owner of a multimillion dollar company _and_ she keeps everything on the SOL functioning. She gets to be called logical, she’s earned it,” Kinga said.

“I guess that’s fair,” Waverly said. “Well, it makes sense to my not ultra logical but still digital brain.”

“I don’t need your input,” Kinga said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“Yeah, but I’m here anyways,” Waverly said cheerfully, “so you’re just going to have to deal with me doing what I was programmed to do and speaking up.”

“ _Ugh_.”

* * *

 

**8 hours, 5 minutes in**

“Well, that’s disappointing,” Max said, looking around the theater. “We’ve passed the duration of the Gauntlet in here, now. I guess Jonah’s revenge isn’t going to be so neat.”

“The Return was fourteen episodes,” Kinga sighed. “He’s still got a _lot_ of revenge to take.”

“At least we won’t run out of food any time soon,” Waverly said, patting his impossible backpack.

“How long do you think it’ll take before the Boneheads watch the footage?” Kinga asked. “You spend more time around them than I do.”

“Honestly? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a couple days from now. They’ve still got to process the Kingachrome and transmit it to Netflix, and Ardy is pretty good about keeping up with his workload, but the Gauntlet was a trial for him too.”

“Ugh,” Kinga said. “I’m exhausted already.”

“ _Already_ ,” Max said disbelievingly. “As if we haven’t just undergone a sixteen hour day of cheese and schlock and endless shorts? We’re going to start getting into the actual movies soon if we’re not released, you know.”

“ _Ugh_.”

“Maybe if we both fall asleep the movies will stop if they aren’t being riffed,” Max said.

“Ever the optimist.”

“I mean, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

“I guess…” Kinga hesitated, then pulled the pins out of her hair with a sigh and tucked them into the side of her theater seat before resting her head on Max’s shoulder again. He kissed her hair before tilting his head against hers.

“You guys sleep tight, I’ll keep an eye out for a rescue mission,” Waverly said. Neither of the Mads bothered to reply, both of them exhausted past the point of caring. The little orange bot hopped out of his seat when he saw that they’d both closed their eyes and wandered back the way he’d come to pick up the cell phone Jonah had left hidden near the entrance of the theater to send a text to his creator.

_Everything going according to plan. Estimate Mads will go crackers within 48 hours. Have fun on Earth!_


End file.
